WeChat

At the Starbucks Biennial Investor Conference today, the coffee and retail giant revealed some plans for 2017, including new foods comings to its cafes, and features heading to its incredibly popular mobile app.
Notably absent among its announcements were any media and entertainment-related plans.
In terms of its tech, Starbucks announced artificial intelligence-enabled features will soon… Read More

There’s no denying that app fatigue is posing a challenge not just for new app discovery, but for new behavior discovery. So why don’t the most popular apps just enable the latest, greatest use cases and create an “open loop,” networking their existing apps? This article examines how the big players are campaigning to be the all-in-one app — and who stands a chance… Read More

There has been quite some buzz around Facebook’s Messenger platform lately. And, almost daily, you can read new articles about chatbots, conversational interfaces, digital assistants, AI and messaging platforms. Is chat the next generation of how we connect and interact with the internet? Can Facebook’s Messenger eventually become the platform that connects all services that… Read More

Cola, a messaging app that integrates apps into chats, is opening up its developer kit today to enable anyone to build new apps.
The updated version available today comes with 12 “bubbles” that are essentially applications that run inside the messaging app. Users can share weather and flight information, gifs, and more without creating accounts with individual tools. The… Read More

The potential for chat apps in financial services is by no means limited to social payments. Facebook has already confirmed that they are pursuing Wechat’s success, venturing into eCommerce. This is only the beginning. Read More

LINE Corp., makers of a messaging app that’s gone mainstream in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, has set a price range for an initial public offering on the Tokyo and New York Stock exchanges in July. Its shares would be priced between 2,700 and 3,200 yen, or about $26.50-$31.50 per share.
As The Wall Street Journal reported earlier today, at those prices, LINE’s IPO could raise up… Read More

I was recently in China, which meant I was living on WeChat. All my meetings were arranged through the app. I authenticated my identity for free Wi-Fi at shopping malls with WeChat. I checked in for a flight by scanning a QR code through WeChat. I watched office workers in Shenzhen pay for their lunches with WeChat. On the subway, most people were chatting with friends on… you know what… Read More

Latest Crunch Report

It may have started as a Bitcoin wallet but veteran entrepreneur Jeremy Allaire’s fintech startup Circle has since shifted focus to social payments, launching an app in Q4 last year that lets users send U.S. dollars to settle IOUs between each other, with its pitch being it makes payments as easy as firing off an SMS. Read More

Uber’s help desk has relocated from email communications to within the app. The reason? Many parts of the world where Uber is keen on gaining a large chunk of the market share, such as China and India, don’t use email like the Western world.
Strange to think about for those of us accustomed to emailing back and forth since the mid-90’s, but much of China doesn’t… Read More

WeChat, China’s smash hit messaging app, has long been a bellwether for the future of mobile messaging. It was first to popularize putting brands in chat and integrating third-party services, two trends Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Messenger and others are jumping on, and it looks like payment is the next major focus. Read More

One of the problems with technology maturation frameworks like the Gartner hype cycle is that you never know where you stand. That is certainly the case with mobile apps today. Depending on whom you ask, the app economy is either poised for significant growth or about to take a serious nosedive. Read More

M won’t be the only artificial intelligence on Facebook Messenger. Facebook has given some developers access to an unannounced Chat SDK that allows them to build interactive experiences and “bots” in Messenger for shopping, booking travel, and more, sources with direct knowledge of the SDK confirm.
The Chat SDK allows developers to create bots that users can send text messages… Read More

China’s largest messaging app will invest 50 million rand (about $3.4 million USD) in African startups. WeChat said in a blog post that will work with Cape Town tech strategy firm Batstone to find promising early-stage companies. Read More

In February 2011, I visited my friend Bill Huang who worked for Tencent in Shenzhen. Bill was telling me about their new messaging app, called WeChat, that had just launched. At the time, I had been using WhatsApp for more than a year. I asked Bill why they would build a copycat. His reply? He simply insisted that I download the app and take it for a spin. That night, I went home to Hong Kong… Read More

Chinese internet firm Tencent announced its latest financial results today, but one of the standout figures isn’t a financial stat. It’s that its messaging services, which include blockbuster mobile app WeChat — one of the services that is inspiring Facebook’s plans for its Messenger business — now has 200 million users’ credit cards bound to it. Read More

One of the 549 million people who use WeChat? Based in China? Expect to see more ‘sponsored’ content inside your in-app news feed because parent company Tencent is gearing up to increase monetization of the blockbuster messaging service. Read More

Beijing Weiying Technology, the maker of a movie ticket booking platform that is embedded in WeChat, China’s largest messaging app, has raised a $105 million series B. Investors include WeChat owner Tencent and Wanda Group, one of China’s largest movie theater operators.
Weiying’s app, WePiao, can be accessed through WeChat, as well as QQ, Tencent’s instant… Read More